37 ms·

> significant whitespace That's not an advantage

by wtf_is_up 12y ago

msandford 12y ago
So says you. The entire python community disagrees, and that's not an inconsiderable number of folks.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  No, the Python community consists of a mix of people who think that the manner in which whitespace is significant in Python (most languages have significant whitespace of some form) is advantageous, people who think it is neither advantageous nor disadvantageous that are attracted to the language for other reasons, and people who think that it is disadvantageous, but not so much as to negate other advantages they see in the language. It is a mistake to conclude that because language X has feature Y, the entire community around language X thinks that feature Y is a positive feature.
- wtf_is_up 12y ago
  > entire python community disagrees I can tell by the downvotes. Also, you can't prove that.
iopq 12y ago
It's an advantage for me, not for you. I've had experience with both and I prefer significant whitespace. The only place where I found it to be a problem was in Jade templates since HTML is kind of white-space sensitive (spaces between tags cause spaces in the output). I do like programming with significant whitespace.
andybak 12y ago
From my personal perspective - it's a major plus when choosing a language - under the general auspices of "readability counts". I find Python-like languages much easier to read and maintain - and significant whitespace is a not-insignificant factor in that.
- pekk 12y ago
  Indentation helps, but it's a pretty pointless thing when you make a lot of other decisions that hurt readability.
- SamReidHughes 12y ago
  It's not like code in other languages isn't indented.
Roboprog 12y ago
Well, not for the offshore and other coderz around that can't / won't cleanly indent if their lives depended on it.
rdtsc 12y ago
> That's not an advantage Yes it is. I have been programming Python, C++, Java and C# over the last 10 years. Python's convention for white-space beats the other ones hands down both when writing and reading large code bases.

> significant whitespace That's not an advantage

msandford 12y ago

So says you. The entire python community disagrees, and that's not an inconsiderable number of folks.

dragonwriter 12y ago
No, the Python community consists of a mix of people who think that the manner in which whitespace is significant in Python (most languages have significant whitespace of some form) is advantageous, people who think it is neither advantageous nor disadvantageous that are attracted to the language for other reasons, and people who think that it is disadvantageous, but not so much as to negate other advantages they see in the language. It is a mistake to conclude that because language X has feature Y, the entire community around language X thinks that feature Y is a positive feature.
wtf_is_up 12y ago
> entire python community disagrees I can tell by the downvotes. Also, you can't prove that.

iopq 12y ago

It's an advantage for me, not for you. I've had experience with both and I prefer significant whitespace. The only place where I found it to be a problem was in Jade templates since HTML is kind of white-space sensitive (spaces between tags cause spaces in the output). I do like programming with significant whitespace.

andybak 12y ago

From my personal perspective - it's a major plus when choosing a language - under the general auspices of "readability counts". I find Python-like languages much easier to read and maintain - and significant whitespace is a not-insignificant factor in that.

pekk 12y ago
Indentation helps, but it's a pretty pointless thing when you make a lot of other decisions that hurt readability.
SamReidHughes 12y ago
It's not like code in other languages isn't indented.

Roboprog 12y ago

Well, not for the offshore and other coderz around that can't / won't cleanly indent if their lives depended on it.

rdtsc 12y ago

> That's not an advantage Yes it is. I have been programming Python, C++, Java and C# over the last 10 years. Python's convention for white-space beats the other ones hands down both when writing and reading large code bases.